A Data Revolution for Whom?

The growing
availability of digital data and data technologies has led many civil society
groups, governments, and international organisations to talk of a “data revolution”. But what kinds
of political projects, models of citizenship and forms of action will such a
data revolution enable? And whom will it ultimately serve?

Following
debates about open government amongst political actors from the White House to
Wikileaks, you could be forgiven for thinking that the critical political
question around digital data generated by states is what information is
disclosed to whom.

Leakers,
hackers and whistleblowers transgress disclosure rules to bring caches of data
to the masses, arguing that the sunlight of public scrutiny should be allowed
to shine in on documents which were previously dark.

In parallel,
the concept of “open data” has gained significant traction amongst
transparency activists and amongst politicians in some of the world’s most
powerful nations. Advocates of open data often focus on how information is
released, arguing for legal and technical modes of disclosure which enable
everything from new kinds of computational analysis to glittering ecosystems of
web services and applications.

But a
politics of public information predominantly focused on the transparency,
disclosure and “opening up” of official information risks overlooking
several critical parts of the bigger picture – including what information is
generated, who uses it to what end, and how it organises collective life.

We ignore at
our peril the question of whether information routinely generated by public
bodies for their manifold objectives (such as evaluating policies or delivering
services) is attuned to the needs, interests and questions of civil society
groups, journalists and others outside the public sector. What are the risks of these systems for whom? Can we assume that
public bodies are already measuring what society collectively considers
important? It would surely be a miraculous (not to mention suspicious)
coincidence if public sector data systems were already optimised to address the
vast and evolving constellation of concerns in democratic politics.

In his
masterful study The Politics
of Large Numbers, the late historian and sociologist of science Alain Desrosières examined the evolution of modern statistical practises in tandem
with different conceptions of politics and statecraft. His work highlights the
different contingent concerns which are embedded into different quantitative
methods and approaches for making sense of the world around us.

Over time
these different “ways of knowing” – whether in relation to
populations or public institutions, markets or meteorological conditions – may become so deeply ingrained, so taken for
granted, that they begin to appear natural to us and it may be harder to
imagine other ways of measuring things.

A politics of
public information worth its salt surely needs to go beyond a focus on what data
sees the light of day, towards developing ways of scrutinising, challenging,
re-envisaging and re-calibrating the priorities, rationales and methods of
public information infrastructures, holistically conceived.

Imagine
public information systems are like a kind of elaborate camera – with various
institutional processes instead of photographic plates exposing a gradual
impression of some aspect of the world. Rather than the central political
question being who has access to the pictures, surely it is also critical to
ask about what the camera is capturing, how it is set up to take shots, what
these shots can tell us about what we consider important and how they can be
put to work in society to inform and shape different forms of collective
behaviour.

What might
this look like in practice? Several French researchers have proposed the
portmanteau “statactivism”
as a way to characterise forms of activism which mobilise statistics to secure
progress on a plethora of social and political issues. Rather than the blanket
mistrust and withdrawal from quantification and measurement of social phenomena
per se, these
“statactivists” focus on the critique of specific forms of official
measurement, and propose alternative indicators designed to advance social
justice on a range of different issues – from working conditions to gender
equality to climate change.

Campaigning
around information about company ownership is a recent example of where
activists have had to look beyond the question of disclosure and towards new ways of reshaping data infrastructures.
Information essential to cracking down on tax evasion, tax avoidance and
illicit financial flows was simply not collected by public bodies. In response,
a broad group of NGOs and activists undertook an extensive campaign to reshape
the UK’s
data infrastructure for company ownership. This included making the case for
changing legal rules, administrative procedures and software systems, as well
as experimenting with new designs to inform what a new register might look like
for companies as well as data users.

Several
recent journalistic projects focus on what is not officially counted, which might be seen as another form of
critical intervention into public information infrastructures. The Migrant Files
was set up in response to the lack of official statistics about migrant deaths
crossing the mediterranean towards Europe. It
documents over 20,000 deaths, drawing on evidence from media articles and other
publicly available sources. In a similar vein, The
Counted project from The Guardian
bears witness to thousands of deaths in police custody in the US in order to draw attention to
the scale of a problem which remains undocumented in official statistics. Both
projects ultimately aim to instate these proposed forms of measurement in the
public sector.

As well as
looking beyond what information is disclosed to what is measured in the first
place, and how this is measured, it is imperative for a politics of public
information fit for purpose in our current moment to develop a clearer conception
of who uses data, and how data infrastructures operate in the world.

In this
regard, we might consider moderating some of the mythologies that shape our
thinking about everything from democracies to markets, innovation to revolution
– mythologies of spontaneously self-organising actors that will optimise
society, if only we can create the right conditions for them to flourish. Who, specifically, do we anticipate will
use public information? And how,
specifically, do we anticipate that they might use this information to bring
about the kinds of social and political objectives that we desire?

If we do not
scrutinise these questions we risk being left with, for example, data without
users or analysis without action. Information about tax evasion is toothless
without having institutions who are adequately
resourced to tackle it. If civil society groups are to stand a chance of
effectively counter-balancing corporate influence on political decision-making,
they must be equipped with the capacities and legal mechanisms – not just the
information – which will enable them to do so.

Whether we
like it or not, digital information systems are reconfiguring many areas of
life. But exactly how they will do so is still very much up for grabs. It
remains to be seen whether the data revolution will become an instrument to
accelerate marketisation, managerialism, austerity and the “neoliberal”
reconfiguration of the public sector, or whether it might afford opportunities
for progressive interventions to civilise and recompose systems which are
currently wreaking havoc on the planet and human life. Either way, the data
revolution is something that we cannot afford to ignore.